Amazon.com subsidiary A9 unveils search engine

Amazon subsidiary melds e-commerce and search with mixed results.

In an attempt to marry e-commerce with search technology, a newly-created Amazon.com subsidiary, A9.com, launched its beta search site. The site offers up web search results, Amazon.com book search results, and a user search history. If the search results look familiar, they might be. Web search results and ads are both provided by Google. Installation of an A9 toolbar (IE only) allows additional dictionary, thesaurus, IMDB and complete Amazon.com catalog searches. The toolbar also provides search term highlighting, website diary, site information (through Alexa) and popup blocker. Website diary and search history functionality are only available using an Amazon.com account log-in.?

Because of the close relationships between A9, Amazon.com and Alexa, privacy advocates will likely question the tying of personal information, Amazon.com (and affiliate) purchases, and search results (web searches are stored on A9's servers). A9's privacy policy makes it clear they will accumulate personal information through Amazon.com, A9 searches, and from outside services. They may use this information to allow third party service providers to perform functions on their behalf such as "sending e-mail and analyzing data." If users are uncomfortable with these terms, they can use the generic A9 search or refuse to log in (which would mean the loss of features and personalization). The A9 launch is also interesting because Google is providing search results and ads for a search page that provides services similar to theirs (web search and Froogle). Just how long can this level of cooperation exist when the partners are competing against each other for Internet eyeballs??

How does A9 stack up to its famous cousin? For the most part the search results are what you expect from a Google search, but there are some notable exceptions. A normal Google search shows nested results for matches within the same domain. An identical A9 search sometimes takes the first nested result and places it on a separate line, sometimes additional results from the same domain are not displayed at all. This significantly reduces the number of search results returned in an A9 search and may omit the result you may be looking for. Also, a resident of the Ars Orbiting Headquarters noticed when a "supplemental result" is found in a Google search the supplemental result is omitted in the same A9 search, even if it is the top result. Finally, I ran across a problem with the A9 toolbar where the installation program crashed on install and repeatedly crashed when trying to uninstall the toolbar (it is a beta service after all).

Early reports from the web claim that A9 has taken the best of Google and has made it better. It all depends on your viewpoint. While the webpage suffers from a lack of customization (I would like more than 10 results per page) and advanced search options, the additional features like search history, web page diary and, toolbar features give A9 an edge. Unfortunately, usage of the niftier toolbar features requires the user's personal information and web search history to be shared with A9 and their partners.